Authentic Spanish Meal @ La Cocina, USJ

3rd August 2013

 

My lovely degree coursemate was back from UK (for a while) and so the trio gang (me, CC and Shirley) decided to meet up for a meal, lazying around, do some catching up... It was really hard for the three of us to meet because, CC is taking her masters in UK, and Shirley's working at JB, me of course, here in KL.

 

After chatting on FB we decided to go to La Cocina, USJ for dinner yay~~ I've been wanting to try out this place ever since I'm back from Spain because it's really hard to find restaurants that sells authentic Spanish meals >_<.

 

Outside view of the restaurant:

 

It's a two storey restaurant, we took the top floor because it's full downstairs. There's a wine club and wine cellar upstairs too~.

Menu:

I've been really looking forward to drinking the Sangria, a must have for Spanish meals~~ My two other friends decided to take something else though, some mint mocktail and soft drinks.

 

My sangria is GOOD! Very fresh, undiluted, and matches well with the dinner. Yummeh~

Here comes the tapas!!~~ (my food caption gonna be short lol, I'm bad at describing food, other than 'yummy', 'delicious', 'good' hahaha)

From front:
1. Gratinated eggplant with garlic, tomato, herbs and parmesan cheese -- I love eggplants and I'm really picky about it, so it's only so-so to me.

2. Fried calamaries -- Love this! Simple but good.

3. Baby squid in cream sauce: baby squid sauteed with shallots, garlic, herbs and cream sauce.
-- This one is just AMAZING! I was craving something creamy so this one suits me a lot.

 

 

4. Fried Spanish mahon cheese: pure cows milk cheese from Spain and button mushrooms, deep fried and served with garlic mayonaise.

 

-- How not to love this lol. It's fried cheese!!!! I was all doggy eyes to my friends and they agreed to order this additional tapas hahaha. And they didn't regret it.

 

 

Overall the tapas was great to me. The portion is a little small but thats how tapas supposed to be. Was having a really big appetite that day and I had the urge to order almost everything lol. But I didn't.

 

Main course was of course, the Paella. We picked their specialty which was the Paella Negres. I tried most of the paellas in Spain before so was hoping to compare which is better.

Paella Negres: spanish rice cooked in blank ink squid with large prawns, mussels, clams, squid, fish and vegetables.

 

Paella was good to me, but the portion is seriously kinda small hahaha. Most of the rice were sticked on to the pan so there's nothing much to try. CC said the paella in the other Spanish restaurant in Bangsar is better so am hoping to go try it out next time.

 

CC was still craving for creamyy sauce so we ordered one extra pasta. What I can say is, never order pasta in a Spanish restaurant lol, it's just not up to par.

Dessert: Crepe with orange sauce. It's just crepe, with orange sauce, hahaha nothing much to explain. I was hoping to try their special creme brulee, but we were all too full to take more.

 

To sum it up, I did enjoyed the meal, and hope my two other friends enjoyed it too. I wonder when will be the next time we'll meet again, am really hoping to go travel with them! Probably to Sg or UK haha. Gonna start saving up my travelling expenses.